While mired in conflicts over dietary law, Paul reminds the Romans of the expansive welcome of Jesus: “Welcome each other, in the same way that Christ also welcomed you” (v. 7). He writes that like Christ, the Romans ought to welcome the complexity (and conflict) stemming from their mixed fellowship of Jews and Gentiles. Why? So that they “can glorify…our Lord Jesus Christ together with one voice” (v. 6).
Advent is often a season of festive praise, where we offer our adoration to the incarnate Jesus. One of the best parts is the music of Advent, where we stretch glorias into eighteen syllables with brass and choir (“glo-o-o-o-o-ria in excelsis deo”).
This uncomfortably-inclusive welcome of Jesus Christ goes far beyond internal divisions between us, but also centers the unwelcomed – the devotion of impoverished shepherds, the veneration of foreign astrologers, the disreputability of his mother, and later, the displacement of the Holy Family from Palestine.
To herald the nativity of Jesus Christ – to stretch our glorias into eighteen syllables – we might take a cue from Paul. To offer our thanks and praise, we must begin with the expansive welcome of Jesus, which calls us into relationships (real ones) with the unwelcomed, and the uncomfortable depths of conflict and community.
God of Jews and Gentiles, who willingly entered into the discord of humanity to transgress our divisions, be born anew within us and made incarnate through our community, that we might sing a hymn of praise to you by welcoming the unwelcomed, bravely plunging into the challenges of conflict, and assured that they can become a womb of new life. Amen.
Rev. Michael Cuppett
Pastor, First Presbyterian Church (Newton, NJ)
Alum, UKirk Nashville
Words for Waiting 